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Should an EU opendata project use Google, Bing Maps or OpenStreetMap? Does it even matter?

Google, Bing and OpenStreetMap (OSM) all have dedicated followers in the mapping fraternity, and there seems to be a healthy level of competition between them. Last week, a well-known OSM’er blasted Google for stealing their ideas and exploiting their open community for commercial gain. These arguments are not new and, whatever the case, all players deserve recognition for bringing mapping to the masses. But I wonder how many people really appreciate the differences between the different systems, not just in terms of technical usability but also legally & commercially.

(photo from authors own Flickr collection)

I’m currently acting as a part-time data usability adviser on an EU-funded geohazard project. The aim of this 3-year project is to create satellite-derived terrain motion datasets for major urban areas across Europe, and to make the data available in the most accessible, understandable and reusable form. The instigators of this EU project are mostly geology and remote sensing experts and so, being more familiar with data creation than data publishing, they are planning to build some kind of INSPIRE-compliant map portal… uurrgh.

Portals date from prehistoric internet times, when people were still chained to their desktops. So I’ve slowly begun to nudge the project team away from the monolithic portal idea. They are now quite excited about opendata concepts such as mash-ups, linked data, the semantic web, and the need to cater for diverse user needs and platforms with simple standards. But, besides all this, and as part of the EU funding requirement, the project still needs to build a site that displays the data in a pre-cooked way which lay people can visually grasp. So a base mapping platform is needed. Should I recommend Google, Bing or OSM?

Rather than pretend to have all the answers (I don’t – see earlier blogpost… ), I’d love to hear your opinions. Does the choice really matter or is it purely ideological? Here’s some of my thoughts to get the ball rolling:

OpenStreetMap: Probably the best choice politically, if only for the term ‘open’. Coverage looks very good and is nearing completion in many parts of Europe. But it will never be as consistent as that of other suppliers, and once coverage is complete there’s still the issue of updates (once the blank spaces are mapped, will people be motivated enough to remap them?). Also, with OSM being an open community, there is some uncertainty around governance and future direction – it’s all very organic and could go off in multiple directions. Then there’s an unresolved issue around the Creative Commons licence which restricts re-use for commercial purposes (unless you’re in the business of giving away your intellectual property). There has been talk of a new OpenDB licence but to be honest I’m not sure how advanced this is and whether it will resolve this particular issue.

Google Maps: Love or loathe them, their cloud infrastructure is unbreakable and their market share in mass mapping is by far the biggest. This is also why some citizen mappers (albeit a minority) prefer Google Mapmaker to OSM for data collection: where infrastructure is sparse, Google offers an out-of-the-box solution with minimum hassle – if you can live with Google’s licence terms and commercial aims. Some people are naturally worried about Google claiming usage rights over your data but in some cases – like an opendata project – this can actually be helpful as it massively broadens your audience. And Google certainly does not claim ownership of your data. The deal is basically that you provide non-exclusive access to your data in return for a free professional service. In some circumstances this is quite a good deal, and does not interfere with your ability to re-use your own data in another form on another platform e.g. as part of a paid product.

Bing Maps. Every year I marvel at Blaise Aguera’s new innovations but in terms of global implementation, Bing Maps seem behind the curve. They were the first to launch bird’s eye imagery but are only now beginning to catch up with Street View (in collaboration with Navteq), and the lag time to implement Blaise’s magic seems quite long, at least in Europe. To my knowledge Bing’s user terms are very similar to Google’s, so there is little difference in terms of IP or re-use. However, Microsoft recently invested in OSM, which is now included as a layer in Bing Maps (and OSM founder Steve Coast even joined them as an employee), so this could have a very interesting future.

Keeping in mind that the geohazard ‘portal’ (urrgh!) would only use one of these services as visual background mapping – like wallpaper, really – and that it will not launch until 2-3 years from now (a long time in internet terms!), which service would you recommend? Does it even matter, or is the choice purely ideological?

3 thoughts on “Should an EU opendata project use Google, Bing Maps or OpenStreetMap? Does it even matter?”

Seems like it would be easy enough to do all three, and let users have the choice. Maybe put the Google with the 3D view option on the homepage, because I think there are more people with the Google 3D earth plugin (versus Bing’s plugin) on their desktop/laptop. For moblie website, Google Maps would be the way to go.

Thanks Mica. Via twitter, @iandees also recommended to use Google, although @mrbigbunbury thought I was judging OSM too harshly. Point taken, but my initial instinct was also to go for Google so I’ll probably stick with that…
Thanks also to @ikiya, @Lociman, @ManoMarks, @mac_do and @edparsons for the retweets.

If only there was a Europe-wide version of OS OpenData to add a fourth option into the mix…..

Sounds like the INSPIRE portal thought stems from the likelihood that the new data will be subject to the INSPIRE directive and they will have to describe the data and make it discoverable through “portals” (there is that dirty word again…). It is hard, toeing the line wrt INSPIRE while making the data easy to access and easy to interact with will be tricky. Publishing the metadata/data in a “portal” (sorry) allowing users to preview it and then linking to some interactive mapping might tick all the boxes.

As for the choice of base map….. good luck. Can you do a blind test and let them pick? Are all of them fit for purpose in very rural areas? Urban areas seem much of a muchness.